Reply to: New PCG Website

[minestrone]

McDonalds launch new range of burgers in Febuary, Essex cat gets stuck up a tree, PCG hack a bit of HTML.

More intersted with the cat and burgers if truth be told.

[mudskipper]

The last time I saw behaviour like that the system was a Bob job. We made them do it again and, no, it wasn't a change request.

Are you sure? Did you specify that the field shouldn't lose its contents when you click into it?

[Zippy]

I'm battling my way through this now. I believe my membership expired in Jan. No reminder from PCG, so logged in to check. First indicator that it had was that, as soon as I logged in I got an 'unauthorised' page.

So I clicked the 'join now' button and am trawling through the forms

Entering my phone number, for example - I enter it area/space/number. Submit the form and it tells me I mustn't enter a space. It's not rocket science to strip the space out!! So I click back into the field to remove the space, and the number disappears, meaning I have to retype it. OK, admittedly not that onerous, but completely unnecessary!

2 error messages later, and I've made it to the payment page, where I have to enter my address even though PCG have it. Grrrr. At least this page hasn't got the eyestrain italics!

Yay, success.

The last time I saw behaviour like that the system was a Bob job. We made them do it again and, no, it wasn't a change request.

[cojak]

New PCG Website

I wonder if they will be using Tapatalk?

[administrator]

They've replaced the whole infrastructure, ditched the antiquated disconnected systems (commercial, website, fora, membership and assorted back office functions) and consolidated the old data (the original had over 400 pages, mostly hard-coded) on to either the website or the new CRM system. The website is a small part of the whole, and the fora an even smaller one. So yes, a bit more than £10k I suspect, but how much to replace everything CUK owns?

Glad you didn't bite! I suspect a bit more than £10K as well Hardest bit on the last CUK revamp was copying data from one system to the other, and we already had it in some sort of DB structure so could have been a lot worse. Was first time with Drupal for me so would be a lot quicker if I had to do it again. I guess you just learn little tricks, like if I had 400 static pages to copy then to write a crawler to spider all pages and dump them into a DB so that they could be easily pushed into Drupal, would cut it down from weeks of copying manually to a couple of days - but then the big consultancies don't tend to come up with time savers like that!

As for replacing what CUK owns - as you know we already have a good system so no need to change in terms of the core CMS at present. But built on Drupal 6 which is looking a bit shabby now compared to 7 - it seems to be a never-ending battle

And that's 21,000 members, growing at 5% a month, incidetnally.

So by the end of the year the PCG is forecast to have 36,000 members? Wow.

[malvolio]

Ouch!



Yes, am a member so saw it when it went live. Nice to see they have looked to CUK in terms of their set up - Drupal main site and VBulletin for the forum. How much was the consultancy for that then

Massive behind the scene changes? It's just a web site with a few thousand members. Sounds like mountain out of molehill to me and jobs for the boys...

Are we able to ask how much the new site cost? VBulletin license is £100 or so and Drupal is open source so if the bill was more than £10K (one good techie for a couple of months) then I would be well annoyed.

They've replaced the whole infrastructure, ditched the antiquated disconnected systems (commercial, website, fora, membership and assorted back office functions) and consolidated the old data (the original had over 400 pages, mostly hard-coded) on to either the website or the new CRM system. The website is a small part of the whole, and the fora an even smaller one. So yes, a bit more than £10k I suspect, but how much to replace everything CUK owns?

And that's 21,000 members, growing at 5% a month, incidetnally.

[administrator]

brokenpromises.com

Ouch!

Anyone seen it yet?

Yes, am a member so saw it when it went live. Nice to see they have looked to CUK in terms of their set up - Drupal main site and VBulletin for the forum. How much was the consultancy for that then

Massive behind the scene changes? It's just a web site with a few thousand members. Sounds like mountain out of molehill to me and jobs for the boys...

Are we able to ask how much the new site cost? VBulletin license is £100 or so and Drupal is open source so if the bill was more than £10K (one good techie for a couple of months) then I would be well annoyed.

[cojak]

New PCG Website

The UX review probably cost extra..

[mudskipper]

Well yes, we had the usual outpourings of bile from the neo-conservatives who hate any changes to "their" forums. I don't like it that much myself, but you get to adapt. The trick is to ignore the PCG skin and use the Default one which is much simpler. Other skins are on the to-do list

To be fair, there has been a pretty massive behind-the-scenes change to their IT in the last few months to get to this point. Most of the early glitches are now sorted and things will continue to improve (says he, reading form the the earlier prepared script... ). However IMHO mudskipper's reaction to the joining process is disappointing; signing up new (or returning) members is supposed to be the simple bit. As for no renewal reminders, 90% of the time the cause is an out of date email address; using your email as the sign-in is partly meant to ensure they have the current one. That might also expalin why the old records didn't make it to the new CRM system.

I got the emails telling me about the new website. I signed in successfully and saw my membership record at the time, so it should have had my details - I didn't need to re-register, it knew my email and password, but then took me straight to a 'you are not authorised to view this page'. A 'renew now'/'join now' page would be better. I think the new site looks nice, but it does seem to be form over function - personally I think the italics thing is really awful - very difficult to read.

[malvolio]

You want to look at their forums, it looks like CUK from 5 years ago. I'll bet some of the regulars are foaming at the mouth over the change away from their old(er) thread format.

Well yes, we had the usual outpourings of bile from the neo-conservatives who hate any changes to "their" forums. I don't like it that much myself, but you get to adapt. The trick is to ignore the PCG skin and use the Default one which is much simpler. Other skins are on the to-do list

To be fair, there has been a pretty massive behind-the-scenes change to their IT in the last few months to get to this point. Most of the early glitches are now sorted and things will continue to improve (says he, reading form the the earlier prepared script... ). However IMHO mudskipper's reaction to the joining process is disappointing; signing up new (or returning) members is supposed to be the simple bit. As for no renewal reminders, 90% of the time the cause is an out of date email address; using your email as the sign-in is partly meant to ensure they have the current one. That might also expalin why the old records didn't make it to the new CRM system.

[cojak]

You want to look at their forums, it looks like CUK from 5 years ago. I'll bet some of the regulars are foaming at the mouth over the change away from their old(er) thread format.

[mudskipper]

I'm battling my way through this now. I believe my membership expired in Jan. No reminder from PCG, so logged in to check. First indicator that it had was that, as soon as I logged in I got an 'unauthorised' page.

So I clicked the 'join now' button and am trawling through the forms

Entering my phone number, for example - I enter it area/space/number. Submit the form and it tells me I mustn't enter a space. It's not rocket science to strip the space out!! So I click back into the field to remove the space, and the number disappears, meaning I have to retype it. OK, admittedly not that onerous, but completely unnecessary!

2 error messages later, and I've made it to the payment page, where I have to enter my address even though PCG have it. Grrrr. At least this page hasn't got the eyestrain italics!

Yay, success.

[vetran]

well at least it looks vaguely modern, last one looked like it was 1970.

[Moscow Mule]

Tried to get a login yesterday, crashed in a snotty heap, which I think they sent an email about yesterday.

Haven't been back since.

[mudskipper]

It's a good rule of thumb that once you've logged in you should remain under TLS. The mixed content is a pretty poor experience though.

Sent from my tweeting foot massager.

OK, possibly. But it remains secure when you log out.